”Can you keep up?”, David asks with his back at me. He is already scaling a steep knoll covered with thick dunes of powder snow. Wandering along as if he was just going to empty the mail box. But then again he is a professional, he does this for a living.
I’m stuck in a fence, leaning on the top of a fir tree while I’m trying to make my left foot to do what I want it to do.
We are on snowshoes – off-piste – at Lac Blanc in the French Vosges-mountains. It’s only been three hours since I got off the train in Alsace and the total range of my life experiences have already been broadened considerably. Because when you think about it, what do you really know about snow until you have tried to walk in it with two miniature snowboards strapped onto your boots?
I must admit right away that it’s actually not that difficult. Snowshoes are for everybody and you don’t need to attend courses or learn plough techniques. You pay 10 Euros a day to rent the snowshoes and the sticks and then you are ready to go – ready to go uphill, that is! But the feeling, well it’s different. To lift the planks with every step. Without ever being able to slide. It is simply a hike with weights strapped to your feet. You get strong thighs!
I went on the trip out of curiosity because the French newspapers are filled with stories about snowshoes. Approximately 50 centimeters long and weighing one kilo, they have become the hottest thing in France. Like a whole new sport that within a few years has overtaken both cross country skiing and snowboarding and today is the second biggest winter sport after alpine skiing.
”It’s become so popular because everybody can do it and because it doesn’t require any training”, David Clar explains, as we trot by an elderly married couple who look like they are in their late 60s. The kind of super energetic people that probably live until they are 90 while still rushing up to 1,200 meter’s altitude with rosy cheeks and low cholesterol levels. The perfect pr for snowshoes. David Clar is a snowshoe instructor at Lac Blanc and he looks like a man who is happy with his business. Because while it was almost embarrassing to walk on snowshoes 15 years go, there are now approximately to million French people who have taken to the sport and a lot of them go to the Vosges in Alsace. Another kind of esprit, as you would say in French: More of a hiking atmosphere and fewer sunglasses with reflexes.
We wander upwards, through the forest, over the animal fence, across the cross country slopes, which we are careful not to mess up. The sky is deep blue and it’s -8 degrees Celsius. This sunlight treatment should be prescribed for everyone with a winter depression, because how hard can life be when the snow creaks under the spikes and the sky gets so in your face?
Now and then he stops, my guide. Pokes at an animal trail. ”That was a rabbit”. And he explains about the rare yellow flowers that now look like dried out mummies, and points to a hill-side – in 1,5 kilometer’s altitude – where the German and French fought it out during World War II. It strikes me that I’ve never seen the mountains this way. That I’ve always used the slopes but never spotted the squirrel scurrying up the tree.
130,000 pairs of snowshoes are sold in France every year. This compares to only 50.00 pairs of cross country skis. Snowshoes have become an industry, and a small factory near Annecy that previously only produced 1,000 snowshoes a year now spits out one snowshoe a minute.
The tourist industry has also seized the opportunity to take advantage of the new trend and in the Vosges they aim directly at the ”foot-soldiers”. They create special slopes for the snowshoes so the hikers don’t collide with the skiers and the most lazy of them can walk on plain tracks. The latter really provokes the enthusiasts. They find it ridiculous to walk on snowshoes in places where you might as well walk in ordinary boots. But the skiing stations welcome all new fans, even the lazy ones.
If it’s your first time on snowshoes you will naturally want to book a guide or sign up for a group trip. Two hours cost 18 Euros and 38 for an entire day. However I must warn you: Only people who are really fit should do the whole day, because after one afternoon and the following morning’s off-piste hike with yellow plastic snowshoes I’m as well kneaded as a French sourdough.
Maybe I’ll never become as fanatic as the folks that book night hikes with David with head lamps and warm coffee in the thermos. However, I admit that it’s fun and I suddenly understand what they are talking about; the others we meet. The nice creaking sound of the snow being stepped on. And the magical moment in the dusk where the sun fades and you duck in between the firs on the way down to Auberge Le Blancrupt in 1,120 meter’s altitude to sip hot grog by the fireplace.
It would be too pretentious to call it after-skiing in the original sense of the word, because here at Lac Blanc the snowsuits aren’t necessarily from last season, or the one before that, for that matter, and if it’s crowded you must share at table with the local police force who isn’t likely to have caught a pickpocket the last several weeks. But the atmosphere is nice. And healthy. The people who come here are more interested in looking at the nature than looking at themselves.
